Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a management system for a communication network.
Heretofore, there have been two primary approaches to control of distributed communication resources. The first approach is generally referred to as centralised management in which a centralised controller receives all network status data to a single logical entry point, processes this data, and then presents it to the network operator or controlling software, and finally issues commands in response to the status data. This creates a serial processing bottleneck which establishes a trade-off between the number of devices which can be controlled and the precision with which they can be controlled. While it has these disadvantages, centralised management does have a number of desirable qualities including the ability to allow a global state of the network to be presented, and it is relatively easy to integrate devices such as client software.
The other primary approach has been distributed control in which relatively fast control is provided locally at the devices so that any problems which arise are handled locally. The global behaviour of such a system is difficult to understand, validate, and extend or modify.
The problems of both of these approaches have been recognised and it has been proposed, for example, in the paper "Decentralising Control and Intelligence in Network Management" by K. Meyer, N. Erlinger, J. Betser, and C. Sunshine (Proceedings on the Fourth Symposium on Integrated Network Management, 1995) to provide a "hybrid" structure, although little specific information is given. PCT Patent Specification No. WO 95/15635 (British Telecom) describes a communications network distributed control system which is single-layered and comprises intelligent software agents, each linked with a communications network node. The agents can enter a negotiation process with customer agents in the provision of new services so as to meet the constraints of both customer requirements and the interest of the relevant service provider. While this system undoubtedly provides good improvements over many other systems for control of complex communications networks, there is still some room for improvement in providing for control of complex communication networks in a simple manner.